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    Alaska's Children's House: Building Essential Skills, Independent Thinking, and Character
    Alaska's Children's House: Building Essential Skills, Independent Thinking, and Character
    Alaska's Children's House: Building Essential Skills, Independent Thinking, and Character
    Ebook195 pages2 hours

    Alaska's Children's House: Building Essential Skills, Independent Thinking, and Character

    By Verna Euwer

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    About this ebook

    Preschool is a time in a child's life when adults can stimulate a child's brain to grow as they pass through the various stages of childhood. These changes should involve their motor and sensory functions through experiences in their environment. The purpose of a preschool should be to lay the groundwork to build on for the future. Certainly, it should not be to make little academic wizards of the children. Instead, there should be devices to help children refine the needed essential skills in life, opportunity to improve their motor skills, be introduced to some of the basics of the academic world, learn about the community in which they live, and yet remain a young child in heart and soul. Alaska's Children's House gives you ideas for all these.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPublication Consultants
    Release dateApr 7, 2015
    ISBN9781594335365
    Alaska's Children's House: Building Essential Skills, Independent Thinking, and Character
    Author

    Verna Euwer

    Verna Euwer, a 52-year resident of Alaska, began her career by teaching in the public schools for 12 years. After attending many classes on early childhood development, an emerging field, she traveled the world studying preschool programs to gain a better insight into early education. In 1967 Verna opened her own preschool and kindergarten, Alaska's Children's House. She has also been an instructor, supervisor, and trainer for Head Start at the University of Alaska. Alaska's Children's House represents more than six decades of successfully building character, independent thinking, and essential skills in young children. Verna, a retired senior citizen living in Palmer, Alaska, continues to work with teachers and parents for the development of children.

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      Book preview

      Alaska's Children's House - Verna Euwer

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      Preface

      About Alaska’s Children’s House

      Parents who work with their young children at home, or do home schooling, or send them to early childhood centers should do so because they want their child to develop life-learning skills and essential character traits. A program to accomplish the above should include progressive ideas mixed with traditional ones, plus a way for the development of some self-motivation and a way to measure both progress and performance of the child.

      Programs of free choice, or learning through play, or coercing them to read and write with traditional methods, do not meet the goal of fully developing a young child’s life. There is little self-motivation or learning of life skills, and few ways of measuring the performance of a child in such environments. Neither is there much character building.

      I intertwined many educational philosophies until I felt my goal of giving a child a basis in building a good foundation for life had been reached. This program encouraged independent thinking as well as measuring the child’s performance.

      The motor coordination program improved their cognitive skills, cultural aspects gave them an insight into, and connection with, their community, and structure and order resulted from proper discipline. It also helped build good character traits.

      Alaska’s Children’s House gives insight on how my philosophy was developed and how it was carried out. I thank you in advance for any comments and questions you may have. Please send them via email to: CHeuwer@mtaonline.net.

      Verna Reth Euwer

      Introduction

      You picked up Alaska’s Children’s House because you are undoubtedly interested in helping young children develop a good foundation on which to build the rest of their lives. I can promise you that this is not the usual reading on the subject. Rather, this is a way of guiding children that I put together based on twelve years of teaching in various grades ranging from first to fifth and then forty plus years of experience working with children in early childhood.

      My philosophy about young children was developed during the time that I operated my private preschool and daycare center known as the Children’s House located in Palmer, Alaska. Alaska’s Children’s House not only tells the story of how the Children’s House came into being but also gives the reader a multitude of suggestions for helping guide the young children you care about.

      Parents who send their children to a school for early childhood training should carefully check the curriculum of each school they are considering. You need to ask the following questions about each school: How does their curriculum help children develop life-learning skills? How do you go about developing character traits? What methods are used to discipline children? How much paperwork do they have the children do each day? Each parent should consider all of the above questions. Since the training of a child is most effective in the early years of a child’s life, you as a parent must scrutinize each curriculum of the preschool before making a decision.

      There are a multitude of philosophies concerning the education of young children. One method is learning through developing life skills by using manipulative devices chosen by the child. Some schools feel children can learn most effectively through play only. There are others who use the child’s time at school trying to pour knowledge into their brains. Others programs try to coerce children to read and write in the traditional method. Also be aware of a preschool that sends home oodles of paperwork for the purpose of showing the parent what the child had learned each day. None of these curriculums would yield the results I had planned for. That is exactly why I did not adhere to anyone’s complete educational philosophy.

      When I decided to work with young children, I knew I needed to create a philosophy of my own.

      My philosophy evolved by experimenting with different ideas and then using what I felt worked. I intertwined many traditional ideas along with a lot of progressive ones. This took many years of trial and error to carry out my aims for them.

      Yes, life skills are indeed important, but the curriculum needed more than just skills. It was the idea of using the manipulative devices to teach skills and their purpose, developed by Maria Montessori, that I knew should be one important element of my curriculum. However, I deviated from her basic philosophy for the reasons I explain in Alaska’s Children’s House. As for learning through play only, and play is a very important part of a child’s life; children do need to hone the basic life skills to be ready for building a good foundation for living. So, while taking time to train children, why not work on ways to develop some good characteristic traits? A good character can be very beneficial throughout one’s life. I give you many ideas about this throughout your reading of Alaska’s Children’s House.

      All the above ideas will definitely help build a good foundation and make life a success for the child. This is where the adult can encourage the child to work on some self-motivation as well as measure the child’s performance. Since no one goes through life without competing with others, neither can one avoid working with others to procure a particular outcome or by just doing it alone. The methods I used to develop self-motivation and measure the child’s performance are fully explained in Alaska’s Children’s House.

      My classroom was based on an open-plan. There were no assigned seats, etc. The classroom environment was made for young children. Children at this age need to be able to move often. A classroom of this nature will give them that opportunity. The approach I used led to:

      Creativity

      A gain of life skills

      Knowledge of their environment

      Development of motor coordination that stimulated the brain

      The building of good character traits for life in the future

      The ideas that are discussed in Alaska’s Children’s House should help any adult in their efforts to make a better life for any child. These suggestions should help adults avoid trying to make young children become little academic wizards. The aim of guiding young children is not the acquisition of knowledge but the desire for and capacity to acquire knowledge. However, knowledge alone will not prepare a good foundation for a child’s future life. This means that adults must also help every child develop basic life skills and develop ways to help build good character as well as their academic skills.

      Innumerable times, I have encountered former school parents who stop me and want to thank me again for giving their children such a good start in life. Some of these parents had their child in my school back forty years or more. They aren’t telling me about the intelligence of their child but rather are thanking me for giving their children such a good foundation for their child’s life. Then they proceed to relate just how well that child has succeeded in life. This led me to believe that my goal, which was to provide an educational program along with developing basic life skills and good character traits to the children in my care, was very successful.

      Although Alaska’s Children’s House evolved and was written about setting up a school for young children, ages three through six years of age, the ideas can be used almost anywhere. These ideas can work with only one child or for homeschooling or for a preschool or for a kindergarten class. The activities listed will help any child build a good foundation for later life.

      The one element of the greatest importance though, is the person who is guiding the child. As you read Alaska’s Children’s House you should note just how significant the role of you, the guide, plays when working with children. I give many suggestions of how to handle some situations but it must be the guide that decides if the child is responding. What really is most important is the type of psychological traits the child develops while under your guidance. No matter how you try to build a good foundation, be aware that the influence of the parents will always have the greatest effect on a child. Thus, you just may need to also try to advise the parent of how you are working with the child.

      How It All Began

      After working with young children for 45 years, I finally decided to retire, and when I did my school parents and friends encouraged me to write about Children’s House, the early childhood facility that I established and operated in Palmer, Alaska for more than 40 years. They felt that the procedures that I had developed to guide their children to so many lasting and beneficial results should be explained.

      Taking their advice to heart, I’ll explain as best I can how it all came about, and how I developed a philosophy that builds a good, solid life-long foundation in a child. I hope that you, or anyone dedicated to helping young children, will find the encouragement and advice in these pages to be of value as you strive to build a good foundation in the children in your care.

      From the time I was in the second grade, my goal was to become a teacher. Perhaps it was the personality of the teachers I had at Stoney Point, a one-room country schoolhouse in Delaware County, Iowa, miles from any town that instilled in me the idea of being a teacher. I do know it wasn’t the one-mile walk with my brothers and sisters to the school over hill and dale. It must have been my zest for learning and for having a challenge that was well worth accomplishing.

      I did have my crashes along the way. In my freshman year at Delhi Consolidated High School located in a small town five miles from my home, I dropped out of school after becoming too frustrated with my classes. However, my father knew of my keen desire to be a teacher and about two weeks later a strange car appeared in our driveway. It was the superintendent of the high school, who to my knowledge never made such calls. After an awkward chat with him, he kindly reminded me that my

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